So finally, our UK opportunity had arrived. Andrew and I returned from our morning run and collected the ladies up for a quick, leisurely and relaxing walk to one of the most famous roadways in the history of music. And for this writer, a pilgrimage I've waited for most my life to make, and Something I would never forget.
The Abbey Road name is derived from the nearby Kilburn Priory, a small monastic community of nuns. The actual street Abbey Road was created in 1829 from an existing farm track called Abbey Lane, as part of the development of St. John's Wood, which is a district of northwest London in Westminster. It was once part of the Great Middlesex Forest, and later owned by the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. It's an affluent neighborhood with the postal code NW8. It's ranked by Forbes magazine as the fifth most expensive neighborhood in London.
For us, it provided an opportunity to visit the Abbey Road studios gift shop, where we were able to pose in front of the iconic Sgt. Pepper's album cover. Andrew had his eye on some of the swag off in the distance.
Outside, where Sharpie markers abound, Beatles fans are allowed to add their own graffiti to an oft-painted wall, to commemorate their visit and to pay homage to the greatest musical band of all time. Just Because.
That's Abbey Road Studios in the background of our marking
As far as the Beatles album itself is concerned, to this day, it's still considered one of the most iconic album covers of all time. It adorned the front of the last album the band recorded together, in 1969.
Fun fact: the album was almost called Everest, and the band was going to do a photo shoot in the Himalayas for a cover photo there. Wouldn't THAT have been a hoot!
Anyways, at about 11:30 a.m. on August 8, 1969, the foursome had traffic blocked and photographer Iain Macmillan climbed a ladder in the middle of the street to capture his shot. The whole shoot took about 10 minutes.
The background details in the shot helped feed all kinds of conspiracy theories at the time, such as the fact that McCartney wasn't wearing shoes, the license plate in the background LMW 281F - both accelerating the Paul is Dead conspiracy that had swirled for years - or the all-time greatest photo-bomber, a shadowed, brown sport coat wearing pedestrian in the background watching the photo shoot unfurl from a distance.
It was actually an American tourist, Paul Cole, waiting for his wife, who was exploring a museum. "I've seen enough museums, I'll just stay out here and see what's going on outside," he recalled decades later.
He thought the foursome crossing the street were "a bunch of kooks."
He died in 2008 at the age of 98.
Not surprisingly - as we witnessed that day - the amount of pedestrians catching pics of themselves on the crosswalk to document their visit to this street is legion. Us Cooks were able to Come Together, trade phones off with another woman, who took the shots for us, while I returned the favor, nearly getting hit by a car not once, but multiple times as you dart out into traffic to catch the moment. Also not surprisingly, motorists who use that roadway get annoyed with all the traffic stoppages. Me, I'm shocked it hasn't just been closed altogether to vehicular traffic, not to mention that there haven't been pedestrian casualties at the site.
It took the original photographer several tries of the Beatles walking back and forth before he got the shot he wanted.
Us? We only had a trio of shots to choose from. The downfall of not having a professional photographer capturing us for an album cover.
I think we did alright for ourselves.
And in The End, the love you take is equal to the love you make.
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